


A Weaver's Hands

by ohmyfae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, Rating May Change, political drama and laughing at rich people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:13:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9413216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyfae/pseuds/ohmyfae
Summary: Aulea is a commoner from the city, and Regis is a prince with the weight of the world on his shoulders. Their marriage upends the delicate sensibilities of the Insomnian Court forever.A what-if backstory set well before the start of the game, regarding how they meet/fall in love/deal with the court's response to their marriage.A fill for thekinkmeme





	1. Chapter 1

Aulea was a resourceful girl.

When she was six, she learned how to pick apart the threads of her old blue dress to let down the hem another two inches, how to hide the string that tied up her hair, and how to wash her face in the West Park fountain in the early morning before the guards came. She would walk three miles to the closest public school, where she smiled and laughed and ate her free dining hall lunches with careful slowness. She raced off by Ruby Street on her way out, where she would slip in the back door of Penwell’s Fine Cloth & Tailors and spend hours untangling ribbons, listening to Mr. Penwell teach his fidgety assistant how to tailor clothes for the nobility. Then she would collect a few credits and run to the tunnels.

Trains used to run there, once upon a time. Now, the alcove where passengers used to stand in wait to be ferried off to the Citadel belonged to Aulea and her mother.

She would clean the worst of the mess, first. Then she’d urge her mother to eat, or drink, or open her eyes, and when that was done, she’d climb up into the light of the tunnel steps and do her homework on the open-air platform.

When she was six-and-a-half, Aulea borrowed a shovel from the gardener in West Park, and she learned how to dig.

She was fine, after. She knew she was fine. Her mother had told her, over and over, “You are a clever girl, Aulea. A resourceful girl. You don’t bow your head to no one.” So she kept her chin high, and her eyes bright, and her voice rang out in the gardens above her home clear and true.

When Aulea was seven, Mr. Penwell allowed her to come into the shop and stitch lines in working class women’s dresses. Aulea was a hand with a needle, and she found the work comforting. Only she could control how small the stitches were, how straight the lines, how the folds of the cloth draped over each other to sweep the floor like ripples on the park fountain. She would sing, sometimes, little songs from her mother’s home beyond Insomnia, and Mr. Penwell’s assistant, Siobhan, would lend a low voice to hers on quiet afternoons. 

She dreamed of one day learning how to _make_ cloth this fine, create her own clothes that even the King and Queen would stumble over themselves to buy. It was a silly dream, but it did help to pass the long, quiet hours before sunset.

The day the monster boy came, however, was hardly quiet at all.

“I don’t know why I have to be here!” The voice in the waiting room was young, like Aulea, but plaintive, with the hint of a drawl that she was starting to associate with the upper class. She could hear soothing noises coming from the other room, and then the mortifying thump of a foot slamming onto the floor.

“I don’t care!” the voice cried again. “He said he would come with me, and he didn’t. I can be fitted at home just as well as here.”

Siobhan sighed and got to her feet, giving Aulea a familiar grimace. “Little princeling,” she whispered. Aulea smiled.

“Children,” she said, shrugging. The assistant grinned at her and disappeared round the corner, cooing in her best customer service voice. 

It didn’t go well. Five minutes later, Siobhan stormed in, hands flapping like the feathers of a ruffled bird.

“Little princeling, indeed!” she hissed, and flounced into the back room. 

Aulea set down the gown she was working on, curious. She’d only heard children make such a fuss on the first day of school, when the little ones were too scared of leaving their parents to appreciate what they were there to learn. Despite Mr. Penwell’s warnings not to disrupt noble customers, Aulea inched her way to the door and peered into the waiting room.

The voice belonged to a boy standing alone in the room with a face like a stormcloud. He was about Aulea’s age, with fine, dark hair and skin so pale she was certain he had to walk around under a parasol all day. His clothes were exquisitely made in black silk, and his expression was so dour that she had to laugh.

He looked up sharply, and caught her eye. For a moment, he looked like he was about to be angry, but then his brows knit in something more like curiosity.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“ _That’s_ a way to say hello,” Aulea said. The boy flushed pink and looked away. “Aw, don’t you be cross, boy.” Aulea couldn’t help but smile. How funny, that a child so well off could look so grim! “I ain’t your mother. You can learn how to talk respectable on your own time.”

“Don’t call me a boy,” the boy said, archly. “You’re my age. And _you_ don’t have to teach me anything, you’re _common._ ”

“Common?” Aulea bridled. Resourceful and clever as she was, she didn't take kindly to insult. “I ain’t common. Common is stamping your foot when good folks want to make you look nice. Common is being a child long past the time you’re meant to be a man. You’re common as rainwater, little boy. I’m common as the moon.”

The boy stared, slackjawed, twin spots of fury high on his cheeks. She half expected him to fly at her, but instead, he closed his mouth and grinned. 

“Goodness,” he said, sounding much less like a brat than he did half a minute ago. “You’re something else.”

“I’ve a right to be, don’t I?” Aulea said, still angry. “Don’t you laugh at me.”

“I’m not, I’m not!” The boy raised his hands in surrender, and stepped forward. “I’m sorry. I was rude. My name’s… my name’s Regis. What’s yours?” He extended a hand to her. Aulea looked at it warily as though it were a snake about to strike.

“Aulea, if it please you,” she said, and sank into a wobbly curtsy. Regis giggled, and she took his hand. 

“It’s very good to meet you, Aulea,” he said.

“There,” she told him, smiling once more. “Don’t it feel nice to treat people like people?”

Regis opened his mouth again, and Aulea laughed in his face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The kids grow up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned, Aulea has a colorful vocabulary.

“Thank the Six you’re here.” Mr. Penwell grabbed Aulea by the arm as soon as she walked in through the back door of the shop after school. He looked fit to cry, all trembling lips and pink cheeks, which Aulea knew meant he was that close to falling into a rage. “He won’t sit still unless _you’re_ here, who knows why.”

“Who?” Aulea asked, letting herself be dragged through the back rooms. 

“The _prince,_ you fool.” Well, he _was_ upset. “Be polite.”

He deposited her in the waiting room, and she stumbled to get her footing. Regis jumped up from his chair when he saw her.

“Aulea!” he said. “Hello!”

“’lo,” she said, glancing around. There was a larger man next to the boy, also in black, with short cropped hair and the look of a city guard. Aulea didn’t like guards—they ignored her, mostly, but she was always afraid that one of them would catch her going home one day and send her off to who knows where with all the other lost kids in Insomnia. She forced herself to look away, and her mind belatedly caught on something _very_ important.

“You never said you were the _prince!_ ” she cried. Regis rocked back and forth on his heels.

“I thought you knew,” he said. “Everybody knows.”

“Well, I ain’t everybody.”

Regis brightened at that. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re the moon.”

“Don’t you mock me,” she said. She caught the guard staring at her and bit her tongue. She should probably say _your highness,_ or apologize, but Regis was just a boy.

“I’m not mocking you,” he said. “I wanted to see you. Do you live here? Is Mr. Penwell your father?”

“What makes you think that? I _work_ here.”

“That’s not right,” Regis said. He stood up on the platform and raised his arms so Siobhan could measure his chest. “Children don’t work.”

“Bet you three credits they do.” Aulea said. “Speaking of, I’m gonna get my sewing. You wait here and be good, _Prince Regis._ ”

Regis watched her go as she darted into the workroom for one of her gowns. Mr. Penwell stared at her as she passed, and she gave him a helpless shrug. By the time she came back, Regis was wearing a new black jacket and trying not to flinch as Siobhan stabbed him with pins.

“So… what do you do for fun?” he asked, looking at Aulea through the full length mirror. She opened her kit and threaded a needle with light blue thread. 

“Well… this,” Aulea said, as she started fixing a tear in the sleeve. “School.” Regis was still staring at her. She huffed. “Flowers are nice, I guess. Why? What does a prince do for fun?”

“Nothing,” Regis said, with feeling. Aulea smiled.

“That ain’t true. Name one thing you like.”

“I like talking to _you,_ ” said the boy. Aulea blinked, and looked up at the guard, who was still staring at her with that steady, disapproving gaze. She felt like the floor had opened up under her feet. Who knew what kind of attention she’d get if she kept talking to the crown prince? Still, it was hard to see Regis as anything other than an eager, if not _deeply_ obnoxious, boy. 

“We’ll see how you feel about that later,” she said, in her most motherly voice. Regis shoved his hands in his pockets, smiled, and squeaked as another pin pricked him in the side. Aulea stifled a grin and got back to her work.

 

Later came and went.

“I heard a rumor,” Aulea said, one evening, “that the Crown Prince of Lucis has been sneaking off to keep time with a whore near Market Street.”

The two of them sat in the upper apartment of Penwell’s store, letting cups of tea go cold in a bundle of cast-off scraps of cloth on Aulea’s desk. Aulea had moved in to the apartment at fourteen, when Siobhan left to start her own business on the other side of town, and had turned the place into a chaotic mess of a workroom. She sat at her loom in the center of the small living room, working the shuttle with a practiced hand, while Regis lay back against hand-stitched pillows at her feet. She glanced down to see his deep frown and laughed.

“It was bound to happen, Reg,” she said. “You sneak out an awful lot.”

“You aren’t a _whore,_ ” Regis said. Aulea smiled at him indulgently. He had grown into a very stern, serious sixteen-year-old, but his flashes of temper were admirable. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she said. “I know plenty. They’re nice. Mostly. Not Kit Handers, though.” She gave him a sideways look. “You’d better not be tumbling Kit Handers.”

“I’m not tumbling _anyone,_ ” Regis said. He sat up, and placed a hand on the empty spot at Aulea’s side. “I just don’t like how they talk about you.”

“They don’t know it’s me, goose.” Aulea sat back. “Tell me what you think. Too much silver?”

Regis squinted at the black cloth on the loom. “You know I’m bad at this, Aulie. And you’re changing the subject again.”

Aulea sighed. Leave it to nobles to get caught up in harmless gossip. No one had yet to tie the rumors to the young, ill-mannered assistant at Penwell’s, so why should she worry? She’d been careful, and it wasn’t like she and Regis were anything but very good friends. She turned to him and placed both her hands on his. 

“I’m about to go crosseyed, and you’re working yourself into a fit,” she said. “Why don’t you call the boys and we go _dancing?_ ”

Regis smirked. “Have a new dress to show off?”

“You think?” Aulea scrambled off her stool and strode to her bedroom. “You close your eyes ‘til I’m done, your highness. The door won’t close proper.”

“As you command, moon of my heart,” Regis said. He never _did_ let her live that down. She shrugged into her new dress—a dark blue with silver threads shot through it like shooting stars—and swirled into the room to find him standing at the desk, hands down, mouth open in shock. 

“You looked!” she cried. “Come on, then, feel the fabric.” She held out the hem of the dress for him, and he ran his fingers over the thick folds. 

“It’s… soft?”

Aulea groaned. For someone so learned, he had no sense of fashion. She grabbed his arm with both hands and tugged him to the door. “Come on, boy, let’s _go._ ”

Out of Regis’ friends, only three of them knew the real reason he kept sneaking out of the palace in the afternoons. One was Weskham, the painfully handsome man who had broken Aulea’s thirteen-year-old heart by walking out with Cid, a young mechanic-in-training. Cid and Regis had gotten along like a house on fire, to the surprise of no one. Then there was Clarus, Regis’ sworn Shield, who had seemed intimidating for all of five seconds before he opened his mouth. He and Regis were as serious about their roles in the kingdom as anyone could be, but they were too easy to tease.

She caught herself looking at Regis more than she meant to, that evening. He cut a fine figure, and there was something nice about seeing him move so effortlessly in clothes _she’d_ made. The cotton of his shirt had been spun by her hands, the threads woven in the early mornings before she opened the shop, the fine embroidery stitched at the cuffs while he paced in her cluttered rooms, talking about foreign empires and duty and _war._ In a way, she had already laid hands on every inch of him.

This time, when he took her hands and led her into one more dance for the night, Aulea’s cheeks felt unnaturally hot. Her feet stumbled over the familiar steps, and when he set her down from a spin, she pushed her calloused fingers into his fine hair and kissed him. There was one dizzying moment where she wondered if she’d made a mistake, but then Regis was kissing her back, slow and hesitant and a little too chaste. 

_Well,_ she thought, as she wrapped her arms around his neck. _I_ am _in trouble._

 

War was declared a few years later. 

Aulea hardly had any time to meet with Regis in the months leading up to the army’s deployment. She had a storm of private commissions from ladies who planned to attend the farewell ball; A useless ceremony meant to send off the prince and his entourage before they caught up with the rest of the military. Regis had invited her, though she was coming along as Weskham’s plus one for the sake of secrecy. Clarus had married his sweetheart, Celestine, a few months back, so he could no longer be depended on as her usual cover. 

Regis _did_ visit, when he could, but the most they could manage were a few hours of talk here or there. He was very withdrawn, but in a way that Aulea knew meant that he was brimming with tense energy. This worried her: It would do no good for him to be so anxious in the heat of battle.

It didn’t take long for her to learn why.

They were in Aulea's rooms one evening, far past the time Regis was meant to return home. Regis was lying in the bed, unashamedly naked with all the confidence of a twenty-year-old with a personal trainer. Aulea, who didn't need anyone else to boost her confidence, was likewise attired at the window, where she organized ribbons in a woven basket.  
“Marry me,” Regis said. His voice was hoarse, cracking with fear. Aulea let the basket of ribbons drop from her knees onto the floor. 

“You’ll be king soon,” she protested. “You’ll need a proper wife. Someone right for you.”

“I _know,_ ” Regis said. “So marry me.”

Aulea rose. The moonlight gilded the light brown skin of her cheeks as she made her way to the bed. She climbed over the prince, her long hair framing his face like a curtain, and ran a thumb over his parted lips.

“Alright,” she said. “Hell. Let’s get married.”

“I don’t want it to be in secret,” said Regis. He trailed his hands up her hips, over her back. “I want to do this right.”

Aulea kissed the side of his neck, in that light, tickling way that always made him breathless. “How do we do that?” she asked. 

Regis’ hands twisted in her hair, and the sigh that left him now seemed to drain all the tension from his body at last. 

“We make an announcement.”

 

When the night of the farewell ball came, Aulea almost didn’t greet Cid and Weskham at the door.

“Come on, girl,” Cid said, rapping his knuckles on the glass of the storefront window. “I can see you.”

“I’m fixing my heels,” Aulea lied.

“And I’m the King,” said Weskham.

“Cid’s a bad influence on you,” Aulea said, as she met them at the door. Cid snickered. She made a show of locking up, trying to keep her hands from trembling. 

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Weskham. He gently turned her round to face him and whistled. “You’ll turn heads, starshine.” He kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry about the nobles. If it weren’t for you, half of them would be dancing naked.”

Aulea managed a weak smile and let Weskham lead her to the car.

She’d come to the palace before for private fittings, but only through the tradesmen’s entrance. Walking in through the grand hall doors was a disquieting experience, and if she held on to Weskham’s arm a little tighter than was polite, he said nothing. Cid looked about as comfortable as she felt, which made her feel marginally better, at least.

The ball was well under way by the time they arrived, which was how she and Regis had planned it. The doors to the ballroom were open, and she could see the nobles’ suits and dresses whirling in a complex kaleidoscope of grey and white, tracing steps she didn’t recognize. Weskham kissed her again for good luck, and Cid squeezed her hand before they let her go. 

She stepped into the ballroom.

The roar of voices slowly quieted as she walked towards the thrones at the head of the room. Her gown was a deep, pitch black, and even with the gauzy silk that billowed from her shoulders, giving the impression of a cloud trailing over a midnight sky, the stark contrast to the grey and white gowns around her was telling. To wear this color in the presence of the royal family was a studied insult.

More notable still was Regis, standing from his seat at his mother’s side, his own suit rippling with silver light in a mirror of Aulea’s gown. 

The pooling silence was replaced with a swell of voices, like a high wind in the trees. Aulea kept her gaze fixed on Regis as he nearly ran down the steps towards her.

When he reached her at last, she gripped his arms like she was drowning.

“I’m gonna _die_ ,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” he said. She laughed, too full of nerves and amused by the doe-eyed look on his face to care that her voice carried over the watchful crowd. 

Regis pried her hands loose and held them, his eyes on her as he bowed deeply over her knuckles. There was another rush of sound at this, an outraged hissing, and Aulea wondered if she had missed some cue. But this was how Regis always greeted her, these days, and she thought nothing of the crowd as she leaned down to kiss the top of his forehead in return. When they straightened, she saw the King had half risen from his throne, and the Queen had lifted trembling fingers to her mouth.

“Your Majesties,” Regis said, in a loud, echoing voice. “I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my future wife.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is in snippets mostly because the main story centers around the court's response to Aulea as Queen. This'll definitely go well! No problem at all! Ha ha!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Regis and Aulea's big announcement...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one--My computer died this morning, so I wrote this on my phone. I have another chapter already done, but that will have to wait until the computer is fixed.

"I will be _damned_ if I let my son send this kingdom to ruin over a nameless chit!" 

Aulea sat on a bench outside of the Golden Drawing Room, hands crossed idly on her lap. At her right side, Clarus Amicitia hovered like a disgruntled bird of prey in his fine Crownsguard fatigues, and on her left, Clarus' wife, Celestine, pressed her smooth, dark brown hands over Aulea's and frowned at the drawing room door.

"He has no right to say that, Aulea, dearest," Celestine said. "Don't let it trouble you."

Clarus laughed, and his wife pursed her lips in distaste. "Sorry, love, but it would take a daemon to deter Aulea when her mind's made up. Regis, too. The two of them are stubborn as-"

"Don't you dare," Celestine snapped. "Men," she said to Aulea. "No sense of propriety. We should do away with them entirely."

"They're nice to look at, sometimes," Aulea conceded. Clarus made a sort of strangled noise beside her.

"Is this how you talk when we aren't around?" he asked.

"Gods, no," said his wife. "We have more sensible things to discuss."

Something crashed in the room where the royal family was holed-away, and the door opened to reveal the pale, slightly worried face of the Queen. The three waiting on the bench stood as she slipped her way into the hall. 

"It's begun, I'm afraid," she said, scanning their faces sadly. "I'll have to order a new vase for the lilies." There was a loud thunk, and a shout. "And possibly the footrest." She placed a light hand on Aulea's shoulder and gave her a sympathetic smile. "It may be for the best, dear. Men can be _such_ fools." She strode off without another word, leaving the others to stare after her in silence.

"I feel as though I have to apologize on behalf of my gender," Clarus said, after a while, "but I'm not sure why."

"You'll figure it out," said Aulea. There was another crash. "What's going on in there?" She reached for the door and swung it open despite Celestine's frantic shout of dismay.

Regis and the King turned to stare at the two women in the doorway. The prince was red-faced and heaving for breath, and his father looked as though he'd run a mile in his uncomfortable dress shoes. Around them, vases, glasses, and half of a tasteful chandelier threw the room into a glorious ruin.

"Regis!" Aulea said. Regis responded to her tone with instinct borne of over ten years of following her stern orders to behave, and straightened from his defensive slouch.

"Your Majesty," Celestine said, in a distressed voice that would make even a behemoth break down and consider a life of community service. The King wilted.

"Did you have a part of this?" Aulea asked, before either of them could speak. Regis' already flushed face turned a deeper red.

"He insulted your _honor,_ Aulie," he said.

"My honor can take it," said Aulea. "The chandelier can't. Or your mother." She saw his gaze flick to the corner of the room, and scowled. "You didn't see her leave?"

"Oh gods, this has all gone to hell," Regis said. He turned to his father again, gave him a curt, incredibly impolite nod, and rushed to Aulea. "I'm sorry, darling. We'll work this out. I need to find my mother before she tells half the court." He ran out the door, leaving Aulea, Celestine, and the King alone in the room. 

"Well," said the King. "That is something."

"Your Majesty?" Celestine asked. The King looked to Aulea with a curious eye. 

"You almost made him act responsibly, girl," he said. Aulea frowned slightly.

"He isn't a daemon, so he shouldn't act like one," she said, with a pointed look at the room. The King didn't even look sheepish. "And I am Aulea," she added. "Not _entirely_ nameless, in the end."

Which wasn't, in retrospect, the _best_ thing to say to a King who threw ornate vases when vexed. 

"As you have attached yourself to my son, you had best hear what he will soon learn. As long as I sit upon the throne," the King said, in a low, dangerously soft voice, "My son will not be permitted to throw his life away on a childish whim."

Celestine opened her mouth in well-bred horror when Aulea simply smiled. 

"I can wait," she said. She dipped into a curtsy, but did not lower her gaze. "Your Majesty."


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn’t long after Regis’ departure to the front that Aulea was summoned to the palace. 

She’d expected it. When four members of the Crownsguard appeared at the shop door in the early morning, startling Mr. Penwell and their customers with their grim demeanor and command that the apprentice be delivered to their hands _immediately,_ Aulea sighed in resignation and came along.

What she wasn’t expecting, however, was for this to be a daily occurrence. 

Every morning, Aulea learned to put on her coat just before the Crownsguard arrived at the door. Then she’d walk with them to their van, where she sat among them like a parrot among crows, and would follow them up to the throne room of the Citadel. There, the King would look down on her from his throne and give her the same, tired plea.

“Have you reconsidered your irresponsible liaison with our son?” the King would ask, looking over her head at the wrought ironwork of the doors behind her.

“No,” Aulea would say, every time. “Not today.”

Then she would be marched back to the tradesmen’s entrance, where she would hop on a trolley heading into town and ignore the curious looks of her fellow passengers. This went on for a few weeks before Aulea grew bored. 

“Not likely,” she said one morning, after the routine question had been asked. “But I do like that new painting you put up in the hall out back. The one with the woman by the flowerbed? That shade of blue is hard to find.”

The King didn’t reply, only stared at her as she was ushered out of the room once more.

A week later, she walked into the room wearing a lavender gown with streaks of periwinkle blue swirling into a spiral at her shoulders and chest. 

“I had to mix the dyes,” she said, before he could speak. “But I think I managed the right color, don’t you think? If I stand next to the painting in this, we can create a garden.” She drew out her skirts, and hidden embroidery shone with darker blues and reds that made her hem look like a field of scattered petals. The King didn’t even speak, this time. He made a sharp gesture, and Aulea was sent away again.

The next morning, she saw that a new painting had been installed next to the first one: A young boy in a field of blue blossoms, staring out over an overgrown castle.

“Your flower woman has a friend, Your Majesty,” she said, after the King had asked her again to change her mind. “He suits her fine.”

She turned to go, but the King stopped her with a raised hand. “Do you know what those flowers are, young lady?”

“Sylleblossom,” Aulea said. “Of course.” She swept out of the hall in a whirl of lace, and the guards who escorted her looked at her with more than a little wariness.

Two weeks later, she wore a shawl that rippled with the deep blue of the flowers of Tenebrae, and the King nearly smiled.

Six months into the war, Aulea was startled out of her weaving by an incessant ringing at the shop door. 

“It’s after hours!” she cried, wrapping a black robe—one of Regis’ spares—around her gold nightgown. “If this is Siobhan, I swear by the Six, I said I ain’t dancin’ ‘til the… war’s… done…” She stopped at the lobby, staring at the hooded figures hovering at the door. 

“Oh, hells.” She unlocked the door to let Celestine and the Queen of Lucis in from the cold. 

“I’m sorry,” Celestine whispered, masking her words in a tight embrace. “She insisted! She’s the Queen! I didn’t know what to do!”

“What a quaint little shop this is,” the Queen said, in a faint voice. Aulea looked at her—the Queen was always much paler in comparison to Aulea and Celestine, but even so, there was an ashen quality to her cheeks that was troubling. Aulea pulled from Celestine’s vicelike grip and nodded to the Queen—A curtsy in a short nightgown would only lead to embarrassment on all sides. 

“Would you like to come up?” she asked. The Queen paled. “Or I can light the lamps here, and bring down some tea.”

“Yes, dear, that would be lovely,” the Queen said. She spread her skirts out on one of the couches, examining the molding at the corners of the walls. Celestine sat next to her and cast Aulea another panicky look. Ah, right. So Aulea would have to fetch the tea herself. 

All the tea in Aulea’s cabinet was painfully strong, meant to keep her awake through long hours of commission work. She picked the least offensive brew she could find and brought it down on a wooden tray. She saw that the Queen took note that none of the cups matched, but didn’t mention it. 

“Something I can do for you, ladies?” Aulea asked, draping Regis’ robe over her legs as she sat with her own mug.

The Queen blinked slowly, as though gathering her courage. “My husband can be… headstrong,” she said. “Regis takes after him, in that way. I wanted to make up my own mind.” 

Aulea was surprised to find herself approving of this slight, frail-looking woman in expensive, impractical boots and face powder. It had to take a will of steel to defy the King when he had his back up.

“The shop closes early on the third day of the week,” she said. “If you’d like to stop by.”

The Queen’s face lit up in a smile so familiar that Aulea couldn’t help but smile back. “That would be wonderful, dear.”

Over time, Aulea’s small living space above the shop began to change. She fitted her chairs with new cushions, begged Celestine’s help in finding suitable drinks that wouldn’t make the Queen wince in polite distaste, and even attempted to bake scones, once. The results of _that_ venture had both Celestine and Siobhan hanging out of the windows, coughing and giggling, while Aulea angrily scraped at a ruined baking sheet. 

The Queen had a masterful grasp of politics, and Aulea spent more time probing _her_ for information than the other way around. It was remarkable—All her life, she’d been taught that the Queen was a weak, somewhat vain creature, but she quickly learned that this was just an easy way for the monarch to do her job without being considered a threat by the men around her.

“It shouldn’t be that way, though,” Aulea said, when the Queen explained how she’d brokered a trade deal by way of befriending an ambassador’s infant son. “You should be recognized.”

“Oh, well,” the Queen said, with a sigh. “Perhaps it will be different when _you_ are Queen.”

The two of them froze at that. For nearly a year, they’d staunchly refused to bring up the subject of what may happen after Regis returned from the war. Now, they looked at each other askance, and sipped their tea, and didn’t mention the sly smile on Aulea’s lips.

By this time, the King had started asking Aulea other questions during their daily audiences: Where she was born, what her mother was like, how she’d come into work as a tailor. She answered as honestly as she could, and there were days when their meetings would go on for an hour or more before she had to run back to the shop in time for her appointments. The halls leading up to the throne room gradually became more vibrant as the months dragged on—paintings gave way to tasteful vases, flowers hung in wreaths from doorways, tapestries were aired and painstakingly restored. 

Years passed. Aulea wrapped the letters she received from Regis in protective cloth to keep them from yellowing, and took to walking alone in the evenings. Her restless feet led her through the gardens of Insomnia, past the dancing halls and theaters of the South end, past canals and stocked lakes. She even found herself at the edge of the tunnel where she used to live, once, and stared down into its dark mouth for a very long time.

One day, when she arrived at the palace, she was directed not to the throne room, but to an office further down the long, colorful halls. She entered to find the King sitting at an ornate but age-worn desk, his cloak draped over the back of his chair.

“I must be frank with you, my dear,” he said, when the guards closed the door behind her. Aulea straightened. “What I told you four years ago remains true: Regis shall not be married to a commoner so long as I sit upon the throne.”

Aulea opened her mouth to say something biting, and hurriedly closed it again. The King looked up from the paperwork on his desk and sighed.

“When my son returns from the front in a week’s time, I will abdicate my crown, which will then be passed to him,” he said. Aulea stared, unable to bring herself to speak. “It is my hope that I will see you at his coronation.”

It took almost a minute for Aulea to speak around the hammering pulse of her heart. “Of course, Your Majesty,” she said, in a faint voice. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My wife pointed out that every lady character in this story would %100 be sorted into Slytherin.  
> She isn't _wrong..._


End file.
